Phyllis Lyon, top, and Del Martin, in their home in San Francisco, Calif. on June 12, 2008, will be the first couple to be married on Monday as same-sex couples are granted the right to marry. Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle

Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice, The Chronicle

Phyllis Lyon, top, and Del Martin, in their home in San Francisco,...

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Phyllis Lyon, left, and Del Martin, who have been together for 51 years, embrace after their marriage at City Hall in 2004. They were the first legally married same-sex couple in San Francisco.

Photo: Liz Mangelsdorf, The Chronicle

Phyllis Lyon, left, and Del Martin, who have been together for 51...

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After 55 years Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are married by Mayor Gavin Newson, Monday June 16, 2008, in San Francisco, Calif. Lacy Atkins /The San Francisco Chronicle

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

After 55 years Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are married by Mayor...

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MAyor Gavin Newsom introduces Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin after they married in City Hall, Monday June 16, 2008, in San Francisco, Calif. Lacy Atkins /The San Francisco Chronicle

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

MAyor Gavin Newsom introduces Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin after...

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After 55 years Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are married by Mayor Gavin Newson, Monday June 16, 2008, in San Francisco, Calif. Lacy Atkins /The San Francisco Chronicle

Lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, together for more than half a century, will get married in San Francisco City Hall this evening wearing the same pastel-colored pantsuits they donned four years ago when they wed the first time.

Once again, they will be the first of thousands of same-sex couples rushing to marry. But this time their wedding will be carried by the strength of a California Supreme Court decision that granted lesbian and gay couples the constitutional right to marry.

Another change: Their pantsuits. The hems have been taken up since Martin, in pale purple, and Lyon, in powder blue, put them on for their first wedding in City Hall on Feb. 12, 2004. The nuptials that San Francisco city officials sanctioned four years ago were later deemed illegitimate by the state.

"We're both getting shorter," said Lyon, who at 83 is four years younger than her partner.

What hasn't shrunk is the San Francisco couple's willingness to be at the forefront of a decadeslong civil rights battle, starting for them in an era when homosexuality could get you fired, denied an apartment or arrested during one of the frequent police raids on bars catering to gay men and lesbians.

Their life together as activists has entwined the political and the personal and has been marked by a series of groundbreaking and often controversial undertakings.

Where they started

They founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the first national lesbian organization. In 1964, they helped launch the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, bringing together national religious leaders and gay and lesbian activists to discuss homosexual rights. Lyon, in a challenge to the leadership of the feminist movement, was the first open lesbian on the board of the National Organization for Women in 1973. Martin, meanwhile, helped lead a successful campaign to get the American Psychiatric Association to take homosexuality off its list of mental illnesses.

The couple made international headlines in 2004 when they became the first same-sex couple to wed after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera decided to test state law by allowing more than 4,000 gay and lesbian couples to marry. After a month, the California Supreme Court halted the weddings on the grounds that city officials acted without proper authority.

Attention will turn to Martin and Lyon again this evening when they become the first same-sex couple in San Francisco, and perhaps in all of California, to marry when the state Supreme Court's decision officially takes effect just after 5 p.m.

"It would not be happening were it not for Del and Phyllis," she said. "They and a small cadre of others sacrificed everything to build a foundation that got us to this historic place where we are today."

Kendell, who met the couple 14 years ago, has become their de facto gatekeeper and helped plan their wedding.

The invitation-only ceremony will take place behind closed doors in the Mayor's Office at City Hall with about 50 family members, friends, neighbors and political allies in attendance. Newsom will preside.

"We have to remember to say, 'I do.' OK?" Lyon said.

"I think we can do that," Martin said.

The interchange was both playful and poignant. The years are catching up with Lyon and Martin. The timing of the California Supreme Court's ruling isn't lost on them.

"We're not getting younger," said Martin, quieter and frailer than her partner, during an interview last week in their Noe Valley home.

Decades together

The thought of being able to get married was not one they could even imagine when the two first shared after-work drinks in Seattle in 1950, a get-together that at first sparked a friendship and two years later a love affair that has endured.

To grasp the longevity of their relationship, one only has to know what they paid in 1955 for their small hillside home with a sweeping view of San Francisco. Their paltry salaries as a secretary and a bookkeeper helped them cover the $11,000 price.

The years of their accomplishments and passions are displayed on their walls: plaques of appreciation from politicians and civil rights groups and photographs and drawings of such public figures as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Shirley Chisholm and Eleanor Roosevelt. There is the collection of campaign buttons for Democratic candidates, the baseball autographed by Giants players, and a vast collection of books, including copies of "Lesbian/Woman," which they co-wrote in 1972.

They said they spend a lot of time at home now - getting up and down the steep stairs that separate their front door from the sidewalk isn't as easy as it once was.

A limousine will pick them up this afternoon for the ride to City Hall, where they probably will be met by cheers from well-wishers and, perhaps, jeers from protesters who believe marriage should be reserved just for heterosexuals.

After Martin and Lyon finalize the paperwork and take their vows, they are scheduled to step onto the balcony overlooking the ornate City Hall rotunda for a public cake-cutting ceremony. That will be followed by a private reception at a nearby restaurant, and then it's back home again.

There will be no honeymoon.

Their daughter, born to Martin 66 years ago during a brief marriage that ended in divorce, will be with them to share in the day's events.

"It's really a big deal for them and for me to have this happen at this point in their lives," said Kendra Mon, a social worker from Petaluma who was raised by her two moms and her dad and his new wife. "It's like icing on the cake and a reminder of how far we've come."

She thought more about the significance for a few minutes and then likened it to the classic Christmas movie "It's a Wonderful Life" - but with a twist.

In the movie, the character played by James Stewart gets to see what his small town and family would be like if he hadn't existed.

"But," Mon said, "this is like my moms get to see what life is like because they've been here."